Cider House Rules II

We don’t often get to discuss the politics of cider.  Politicians are usually smart enough to leave cider alone.  But it did make the headlines this week, with news of changes in EU rules that could have a devastating effect on small producers.

This, of course, is the opposite of what should be happening, even under the EU if EU thinking on re-localised production were to lead to matching actions.  The EU is a combination of the wrong things done badly and the right things not done at all.  That’s partly down to how it’s designed, as an economic union that does political things, like regulation, when it needs to be a political union that does economic things, like asserting European self-sufficiency and solidarity on the global stage.  While leaving internal regulation to the regions.

The vision just isn’t there, which is why so many are turning off and turning away.  They’re not helped by misinformation that goes unchallenged, pumped out by a media whose handle often seems cranked by bitter old men dreaming of a new 1950s.  The facts about Europe, when you can get them, are often surprising.  And one is that it’s wrong to blame the EU over the craft cider rules.  It’s London again, that has so far failed to make the case for an exemption.